In a traditional pseudo-random noise correlation accumulator (PNCA), the accumulation of energy for Mdwell symbols occurs on regular intervals (for example, every 50 symbols) and the result of this accumulation is compared with a threshold. If the accumulated energy is not higher than the threshold, indicating that the candidate time alignment is incorrect and the signal is not locked, the accumulator is purged and a new lock is attempted on a different 50 symbol increment of the received signal. One problem that this approach poses is that the integration periods are not necessarily aligned with the beginning of an incoming burst in the search engine. As a result, it is likely that at the beginning of the burst, one lock attempt will accumulate in the PNCA some number of symbols of noise (e.g. prior to the burst beginning) and some number of symbols of signal. If the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the incoming burst is low, as will often be the case for a discovery burst from a maximum-range hailing node, then it is likely that the detection threshold will not be tripped during that dwell and there will correctly be no signal lock. In the worst case scenario, the first PNCA attempt just misses locking onto the signal and must iteratively search each 50 symbol string until the despreading code aligns. This worst case scenario mandates a burst preamble length of at least 2Mdwell to that the PNCA can lock the burst onto the spread signal before the payload of burst begins.